1. Introductions and apologies
Shirley welcomed everyone to the meeting. Ten people attended. Apologies were received from Gary Heather, Mick, Emma Davis, Morag, Andrew and Kate

2. Minutes and matters arising
Previous minutes were approved and signed as a correct record. There were no matters arising that were not already on the agenda.

3. Update on Whittington Health

i) Communication with Simon Pleydell
Shirley reported on Simon Pleydell’s (interim CEO of Whittington Hospital) reply to her letter sent after the June DWHC meeting. The CEO stated that the newspaper report about cuts to cancer and cardiac services were erroneous, he reiterated that he wanted to be open as possible, but a bald statement of bed numbers wasn’t very useful information because of changing circumstances; and that he’d be happy to accept an invitation to a DWHC public meeting or consultation.
ii) UNISON day of action
DWHC attended UNISON’s rally outside the hospital on June 5th, with banner.
iii) Whittington Hospital Board meeting 4th June.
‘Fight Against Racism’, had presented a petition to the Board meeting, signed by 5000 people against cuts the hospital. The Board refused to hold a discussion with those who’d presented the petition and walked out of their own meeting.
iv) Anti-austerity march 21st June
A few members of the DWHC attended. More volunteers are needed to help with carrying the banner
v) Jem
Shirley informed the meeting that sadly Jem has resigned from the DWHC. Jem has been one of the stalwarts of the DWHC since its first and very successful campaign to stop cuts to A&E. She’ll be much missed for the huge amount of work she put into the campaign, for taking the message out onto the streets, being the banner carrier on many marches and demos and for keeping the database going.

4. DWHC proposed Manifesto
Following last month’s meeting, several emails had been received with ideas for the Manifesto. There was a long discussion at the meeting, at which we agreed several manifesto demands, the structure of the manifesto and how we would promote it.

a) Draft Manifesto: the meeting agreed that this will be in petition format, and will open with a statement about the state of the Whittington and the NHS in general, followed by about 10 demands that will reflect local and national concerns. An accompanying leaflet will be produced expanding on each of the demands. The meeting agreed that the following points should be included:
• Publically funded hospital care and services should be publicly managed and publicly run
• Repeal the Health and Social Care Act 2012
• Bring management and provision of health services back in-house
• Restore the national duty of care
• People should only be released from hospital care when they are better and are feeling better, and only into circumstances with sufficient community support services
• Retain the Whittington as a local hospital with a fully functioning A&E and sufficient bed capacity for a growing population
• Support hospital workers campaigns for decent wages [Point made: good wages help everyone – if morale is higher, people work better and patients get better treatment]
• No downgrading staff – keep expertise in the hospital
• Include a point about on the capacity of day care provision in mental health [Point made: Islington has the highest rate of psychosis in the country; and one of the highest suicide rates among young men]

Tony read out the main features from the recently produced KONP (Keep our NHS public) Position Statement. Noted the many points of overlap between the DWHC.

b) Process: Valerie, Shirley and Tony will pull together draft manifesto following the meeting. This will be circulated to all those present to comment/add. A revised draft will then be sent to John Yudkin, Jacky Davis and Ron Singer for further comment. A final version will be produced from this, and debated at a consultation event/public meeting 9th October.

c) Promoting the Manifesto – agreed to launch it on 28 September at the showing of ‘This may hurt a bit’ (see Agenda item 5 for more detail). We will work with the local newspapers to get coverage, circulate it to all local NGOs and others working on health (e.g. Healthwatch, Manor Gardens) requesting that they refer to/or include it on their on-line and print newsletters etc. Also agreed to see how we could circulate it on the streets – either through leafletting, having stalls, distributing to other’s who run regular stalls.

5. ‘This may hurt a bit’
Shirley has an agreement from Max Stafford-Clark that he will put on a performance of his play ‘This may hurt a bit’ on Sunday 28th September. The company has also agreed to a Q&A afterward. Performance time yet to be confirmed. Likely venue is Lauderdale House in Waterlow Park, Highgate. Lauderdale is fully accessible, and has a bus stop right outside. There will be costs, which will be meet through existing funds, ticket sales and a collection on the night.

6. AOB – there were no additional items

The meeting closed at 8.40

The next meeting will be held 8 September, 7-9pm at Archway Methodist Centre

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Note dates of next meetings

September 8th (Monday): DWHC Planning meeting (main item: how to promote the manifesto)
September 28th (Sunday): ‘This May Hurt a Bit’
October 9th (Thursday): DWHC Public meeting
October 18th (Saturday): National Day of Action

What we are fighting for

* We are opposed to the rundown, closure or privatisation of all hospitals and hospital departments and any other key health services in North London.

* We want to stop the sell-off of our NHS.

* We call for the repeal of the Health and Social Care Act - the government measure which opened the way for big private companies to take over our hospitals and health services and shut them down if they don't make enough profit.

* We call for full funding of our NHS to meet our health needs, free at the point of delivery.

* We are proud of our caring staff at the Hospital, and welcome the diversity of the staff.